


The Steps of the Moon

by ellerean



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 03:22:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2492630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellerean/pseuds/ellerean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haru never liked the way Ryugazaki looked at them. The Elite had loosened up since he’d first arrived, albeit slightly, but he still held a confused wonder whenever Rin and Haru were low in conversation, and he was the first to notice when they’d leave the room together.</p><p>It wasn’t that Haru <i>cared</i>, but it was annoying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Steps of the Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Some of Us are Looking at the Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114296) by [autoeuphoric (FreezingRayne)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreezingRayne/pseuds/autoeuphoric). 



> Everytime I read _Some of Us_ I spend _days_ thinking about it, imagining what happens behind the scenes and expanding upon the already-expansive world that autoeuphoric has created.
> 
> As a result, this happened.
> 
> If you haven't read up to chapter 23 of _Some of Us_ , this contains spoilers.

> When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
> 
> —Oscar Wilde,  _De Profundis_

Haru never liked the way Ryugazaki looked at them. The Elite had loosened up since he’d first arrived, albeit slightly, but he still held a confused wonder whenever Rin and Haru were low in conversation, and he was the first to notice when they’d leave the room together.

It wasn’t that Haru _cared_ , but it was annoying.

 _Everything happens for a reason_ , Makoto would say, following everything Haru greeted with a scowl. When Rin dumped him the first time. When Haru called him at sunrise, not remembering the night before. When they couldn’t even be berthmates, getting tossed into a cramped cubby with someone who wasn’t Makoto.

Maybe Rin getting his leg blown off meant Ryugazaki wasn’t going to stare at them anymore, or at least he’d stare at them a different way.

Haru keeps his head down as he wheels Rin from the med bay, the silent roll of the wheelchair somehow magnified in Haru’s ears. Rin is silent, which somehow makes it worse; Haru regrips the wheelchair’s handles in sweaty hands, bowing farther over Rin’s head as Rei passes them by. The Elite offers a slight wave to Rin, who inclines his head in acknowledgement, but Haru ignores them both.

“Stop breathing on my head,” Rin says, which is the first words he’s spoken since the grunt of welcome in the med bay.

Haru had never bothered to ask why Rin’s retinal scanner works for him; all Haru knows is he could get into the room unaccompanied not long after they’d started fucking again. It’s useful for midnight visits but more so now, with Rin’s wheelchair positioned too low below the scanner, with Haru’s chest leaning into the back of Rin’s head for the scanner’s recognition. When the door opens the berth is familiar in the way all of them are familiar, the same cramped, metallic interior, soothingly familiar yet foreign. Haru twists the chair to Rin’s side of the room, not solely because it is Rin’s but because it is automatic, his bed being on the same side in his own berth.

Rin claims he doesn't need help. “I got it,” he says, balancing on his only foot, not allowing himself enough time to rotate before flopping unceremoniously face-down on the bed.

“Still got it?” Haru asks, crossing his arms.

Rin flips the stub of his thigh over—and his middle finger—unused to the weightlessness of his left side and crashing his hip into the wall. If not for his soundless cry and the grappling for an injured leg that isn’t there, Haru would’ve laughed.

“Asshole,” Rin mutters, shimmying to an upright position.

Haru sinks into the wheelchair, which is cold and metallic and completely uncomfortable. He won’t look at Rin’s leg, or lack thereof, staring instead at the wall over his head. Rin sits atop the covers in a pair of shorts, and Haru can’t decide if that’s better or worse than the deflated leg of the pajama pants he’d worn the day before.

“Look at it,” Rin says, trying to sit up straighter to meet Haru’s wandering gaze.

“I’ve seen it.”

“ _Look at it_.”

Rin proceeds to lift his hips to yank off his shorts, an action Haru rarely witnesses without lying on top of him or doing it himself. Rin wears underwear but even that’s a joke; the left leg of his trunks flaps over nothing.

“Rin—”

He jerks the underwear off the stump and winces when he accidentally punches himself in the balls. Haru is revolted not by the sight, but how _relieved_ he is that Rin still has feeling where it matters.

It isn’t much of a stump, Haru can see, more of something been erased and patched over. The skin is too smooth around the edges, though the gash is still pink and healing. Rin grips the fabric of his trunks in a fist, his gaze burning holes in Haru’s lowered head.

But Haru looks. He _stares_ , unblinking, until Rin shifts uneasily.

“That’s enough,” Rin says, pulling up his underwear, readjusting the band around his hip. He snaps the band like he’d snapped Haru’s underwear so many times, though weaker, staring at his crotch as he rests a hand on the absent thigh. He moves the hand to his stomach instead, and Haru doesn’t miss it.

“Rin . . .” Haru’s hands are on the wheelchair’s armrests, holding them too hard considering he’s still sitting, and now it’s Rin’s turn to look away. It’s a slow process moving to the bed; Haru shifts his weight to one side, as if considering whether to move at all, before sliding forward. Not even fully standing, his knees slightly bent as he rises, transferring himself to the edge of the bed before he can change his mind and leave.

He takes Rin’s hand, the one still snapping his underwear, and pushes it away, slipping his own hand into the band instead. Rin doesn’t protest as Haru straddles his thigh, but he doesn’t say anything at all. Haru is used to sitting on his thigh, but he’s not used to the extra space on either side, no awkward other-leg to press his knee against.

Haru inches closer, his knee slipping toward an absent border, nothing to keep his balance besides Rin’s hands that rest on his thighs.

“I don’t need your pity fuck,” Rin says, and Haru chokes back a laugh.

“Who says I’m going to fuck you?”

But it’s a lie, because Rin has known that look in his eye since the moment they’d met. Since before they knew what fucking _was_ , huddled together in a Sky City alley for warmth. Experimenting with open-mouthed kisses because those, too, were warm.

There’s too much space around Rin’s cock; it’s easily accessible, and if Haru hadn’t felt a shred of shame at that moment he would’ve stuck his hand up the empty socket of Rin’s underwear. He hopes the idea doesn’t come to Rin, too, as Haru rubs his swelling erection, slowly massaging the worn, synthetic cotton. The clothes up here are strange—nothing’s natural, and the attempt had been made for comfortable undergarments, but there’s still something too slick and stiff about even their most comfortable of clothes.

Haru tugs them off Rin's hips, so much more comfortable without them, anyway, and the band catches on the tip of Rin’s erection. It’s easier now, in a way, to remove his underwear, pushing it down one leg so Rin can casually kick it to the floor.

“I don’t have lube,” Haru says belatedly, reaching down farther between what used to be a pair of legs.

“ _You?_ ” Rin’s scoff is cut short by Haru’s slight squeeze of his balls. “Fuck, Haru; watch it.” But his head tilts back, pressed hard to the wall behind him. “Go get some from the Hazuki.”

Haru _hmm_ s noncommittally, sliding to the mattress to kneel before him. “Does he even need it?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.” Rin’s eyes are closed now and he bends his leg, his other side twitching to follow. He physically holds his hip down to stop the automatic movement. “Are you gonna blow me or what?”

Haru shakes his head. “No.” His tongue slides up the faint trail of hair from his pelvis to his belly button, and he smiles despite himself when Rin sucks in a breath. He licks the tip of his cock just to be an asshole, but won’t deny Rin the pleasure of jerking him off as he sucks on his hipbone. The one with the leg.

Rin grabs his head in both hands, pushing Haru to the other side of his body. His shoulder sinks into the empty space of Rin’s amputation, still gripping his dick as he tries to right himself. To find some sense of balance. To lean on _something_ so the position feels natural, like it had been for years.

“Watch it!” Rin barks, swatting Haru’s fist around his cock.

Haru wraps one arm around the dead weight of Rin’s left side, propping it on his protruding hipbone, and Rin has the decency to slide down a bit so Haru can rest on _something_. He’s so used to Rin’s thighs—both of them—holding him up, symmetrically leveling his weight. He doesn’t look at the stump. He pretends it’s not there as he licks the length of his cock, focusing on the steady beat of Rin’s pulse beneath the skin.

“I thought you weren’t blowing me,” Rin says, as Haru shifts upward, leaning all his weight on Rin’s thigh. Rin fidgets, but doesn’t complain.

Instead of replying Haru takes him into his mouth all at once, no warning or preparation, just swallowing him whole. Haru can feel when Rin’s nails pierce the skin of his shoulder.

He tastes the same. Haru’s not sure why he expected different, like the trauma of amputation and blood transfusion might change him. He tries not to think about Nitori’s blood pumping through his heart. He opens his eyes to prevent rewitnessing a battered and bleeding Rin being pulled from the red-tinted water.

“Haru?”

Haru leans over him farther, taking him in deeper, ignoring the choking reflex of Rin’s cock at the back of his throat.

“Haru, hold up.”

He’s gasping when he sits up, wiping saliva from his lip with the back of his hand. Rin’s going limp and he hangs one hand over his groin, like Haru’s never seen it before.

“C’mere.”

Haru shakes his head and grasps Rin’s hips again, looking down at the hand concealing his crotch. Rin transfers the hand to Haru’s chin, tilting it up to force Haru to meet his eyes.

Haru’s so used to Rin’s angry front that he’s almost startled backward when his eyes soften, holding back the sudden onset of tears. Rin allows him to touch the corner of his eye, as if erasing any evidence the slight moisture had been there at all.

Haru scowls. “Why’d this happen to _you_?”

Rin takes on a high-pitched, poor imitation of Makoto. “Everything happens for a reason.” Haru bites down on his lower lip to prevent from laughing. “It happened ’cause it was going to happen. What, you wanna take my place? The one-legged freak who can’t even take a shit without some doctor reporting it?” He snorts. “Can’t even be a hot guy holding my dick while I take a piss.”

“Do they really—”

Rin quickly cuts him off. “Not anymore.”

Haru doesn’t have to say it. He touches Rin’s hip, sliding down to where his thigh once was. It ends abruptly with no warning, even though Haru knows where it ends. He traces the crease of his pelvis, and it doesn’t take much for Rin to get hard again.

“Miss me?” Haru says.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Haru kisses him hard and Rin is unprepared, his teeth nipping Haru's lip and drawing blood. The kiss is metallic and Rin sucks on his lip, as if healing him or healing himself, absorbing his lifeforce. Rin's hair feels the same when he runs his hands through it, his abs feel the same when Haru pulls the shirt over his head. Haru wants to straddle his hips but there's nothing to lean on. He continues kneeling before him, his position absurdly childlike, as if they've returned to that dark alley and are practicing kisses on each other once again.

Haru moves to his neck, dragging his lips over Rin's pulse point, silently wondering if they even  _should_. If it's safe to accelerate his pulse like this, and so rapidly.

"I would," Haru whispers, so low that he wonders if he says it aloud.

Rin's hand is on the back of his neck, combing his fingers up and through his hair. "What?" When Haru's hand slides down his chest and rests on the hole of his absent leg, Rin violently shakes his head. "No you wouldn't. Cut the crap, Haru. Don't say that."

He grunts when Haru slides off the bed, and for a moment he just looks at Rin—leg spread wide, one hand on his abdomen and the other on his dick. Haru tries to remember what the other leg looked like, but its image is already fading even if its feeling hasn’t. Haru turns for the door.

“H-Hey, where are you going?!”

Haru glances over his shoulder and mechanically smoothes down the seat of his pants, which Rin so blatantly watches. The door opens for him automatically. “Going to get lube.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Here](http://letsswimtogethernanase.tumblr.com/post/100633716748) on tumblr.


End file.
